Thursday, 25 September 2008

Well, I really needed to focus on some stats and look for leaks. Chuck made an interesting comment in my last post, basically saying there must be something wrong if I'm suffering swings like that. I mean, don't get me wrong players will suffer with swings like that on a fairly regular basis I believe, but I felt I had to search out any flaws in my recent stats.

I'd felt over that period that I had become a bit of calling station. When looking at my stats, it sort of proved that. My WTSD was around 33%, normally 27% and I was calling 3bets far too often for my liking. So over the last few sessions I certainly had that in mind and the results were a lot better, plus running well obviously helps.

I noticed there's a couple of CC players going through a similar swingy period. In fact theirs are probably a lot worse than my own. Downswings are really difficult for player's to deal with. They really affect your ablilty to actually make rational decisions, or even to rationalise why the hell we play poker. Many players who experience downswings obviously tilt off a lot of $$$ as well. What sets a really exceptional player from a marginal winning one is the ability to cope with tilt and the d/swong period. One day I hope to be able to cope with them a lot better that I do now. Hopefully those guys fortunes will turn for the better soon.

So hopefully I will have a more stable time for the remainder of the month. Ready for my next months goal ;). GL all.

Monday, 22 September 2008

Yeah I hate to say it, but I'm pretty sick of 6max at the moment. I really don't think I tilt that much, and after the last few months of mega swings I think I coped quite well. But in 6max I'm having like 8 buy in fluctuations on a daily basis, and I'm starting to tilt a little.

This morning just summed it up, I get 4 buy ins up playing 5 x 100nl and 1 x 200nl tables. Then a mega lag raises it up on the 200nl table, I 3bet him he calls. I have TT on a blank flop he bets out I r/r, he calls w/QQ. Yeah I run shit at 200nl thats for sure.

Anyways this mornings session I donk off $400ish after being +$450 up at one stage. So mentally I'm finding it difficult to cope with the swings, and I'm not playing at my best tbh. I'm also becoming a bit of a calling station, which is also pissing me off. I'm not sure why it's so swingy, whether it's my style of play, my aggression or what, but it's pissing me off big time. Here's the graph showing the swongs since my last update:

Believe it or not, I'm actually running at 5PTBB/100 at 100nl this month. The attempt at 200nl has soured that though. I moved down to 100nl basically b/c I had to withdraw $1k from my roll, and I lost 6 buy ins, which isn't a lot, but I work to like a 50 buy in rule so while my confidence is a little low I dropped down. GL all.

Monday, 15 September 2008

Well, I looked at my history for 100nl 6max and over around 80k hands I was running at like 3.3 ptbb/100. Ok it's not like I'm crushing it but It's ok. Things have certainly improved, since my coaching. Maybe not shown in my results, but I feel I'm playing a helluva lot better pre flop and post flop.

Now Chuck and Zach have been experimenting at 200nl, so rightly or wrongly, I thought I'd give it a go. Well over the last 2 days I played 3k hands at 200nl, and it's been swongy as hell. I've been up a couple of buy ins and down a few, but upto this point I'm break even. Now the differences between 100 + 200 nl shouldn't be that big, and I'm not sure they are. But I was getting a shit load of aggro when I was isolating limpers, or making squeezes. Maybe I was genuinely beat, but I can't help but think I'm gonna need to be a little more careful at this level. 4bet bluffing I think is gonna have a bit more value at this stake I think. I dunno maybe I'm just over thinking the move up, and it's just a settling in period. I'll see how it goes, if I lose like 4-5 buy ins then I'll be moving back to 100nl.

I posted a hand on CC that is probably total spewy to look at, but you know what.... I was fairly confident he was taking the piss. The build up to this play was he had position on me, and basically everytime I opened up the betting, he 3bet me. Now I had stats on this table of like 33/29/2, he was like 31/27/5, this was over about an hours play. So I varied my play as we were deep, so sometimes I would call his 3bet for set mining purpose, or just to see how he played post flop. Post flop he would fire 3 barrels almost always against me. I 4bet bluff twice, 1st time he shoved, second time he folded. So my thought process is basically he sees me as weak post flop. Now I was hoping to get a real decent hand to exploit this fact but it never cam and he kept 3betting.

So here is the hand in question, if he 5bet shoves it's hand over and I fold, regardless if he has a hand or not, but I felt this was just one bet too many for him. I knew that when I made the 4bet, he knows that I 4bet bluff, so multi level thinking was just personified here. I'm still not happy with it coz it was sooo deep, but I just had to put him to the test. LDO I look a fool when he turns over aces, but I just had to trust myself here.

Tuesday, 9 September 2008

Meh! I dunno, didn't think I'd be disappointed with an $81 dollar winning day, but I am. 1st session went well, got to about 2.5 buy ins up. Second session started great as well and was up around $450, then I just lost a shit load in NSD, basically all my islolation/squeezes got mullered, all my CB's got called or raised, and I got frustrated and stacked off light.

So Monday night I spent almost 3hrs with my new coach who had reviewed my 1hr video I made him. I was a little sceptical prior to this, as basically he's quite cheap as coaching standards go at $35/hour or $120 for a 4hr review. I have to say he impressed me a lot. Considering he's new, he helped me loads with the recording of the video, and his review was very structured and detailed. I wish I was that organised, because I should have recored the bloddy thing, doh!

So my goals for the next few weeks are:

Don't let villains limp from the SB on my BB

I actually didn't think I did this, but on the video it happened quite a bit.

Isolate/Squeeze more, certainly I/P

He picked up on a lot of spots were there was a lot of limpers, and I should have been isolating i/p, Also 3 betting regs i/p, and oop to constant blind stealing. Again I thought I did this to some degree, but there were a shit load of spots he noticed I should have been doing it on the vid.

Concentrate on betsizing

Because I use a betpot script, my betsizes are sort of automatic. But he notice a few times that 75% pot Cbet was too much against certain villains/boards, and if it was 50-66% then that would have the same affect, plus it saves us a little money as well. If you playing 500k hands a year then this can add up.

Less flatting oop

LDO!

Value bet more on river

Again this is something I've been working on lately, betting the river. Sometimes it has to be a thin value bet as well. The only problem I have with this is if I value bet the river thin and villain shoves, sometimes I convince myself to call. There are times when a bet/fold on the river is the correct line. I just have to practise this I suppose.

Hone hand reading skills, (Well I would if I had any to start of with :) )

I'm shit at this, and hopefully in a few weeks I'm gonna do some more work with him on this.

Well I feel kind of inadequate if I'm being honest. I mean I think I'm an ok player, but I could tell this guy was fairly young, but he had a really deep thinking of the game. In some respects a lot like the guys on CC, like Chuck, Zach, FP, C9 etc. There have been some really deep thinking posts on the likes 4-bet bluffing and c9 has just started a discussion on ways to combat light 3-bettors. I just feel this is like way beyond my comprehension at times, or I don't feel competent to express my thoughts on it. I'm amazed by their knowledge a, and I'm glad there on CC, coz I hope a little of their knowledge will rub off on me.

Bankroll Milestone

I'm gonna post this now, coz who knows it may not happen again :(. If you include the monetary value of my Fpp's, my poker bankroll is now $10k :)

I will make a nice official post on this if I ever get my BR to $10k without the Fpp's. GL all.

Sunday, 7 September 2008

LOL! You haven't heard me say that in a while, and I hope it's not the kiss of death. This month I'm on an overdue heater, imo. Obviously I'm on a heater and that's great, but I feel like I'm playing well as well.I don't know if it's beacause I'm concentrating on this NSD stuff, but it just seems to be clicking atm. It's not like I'm being super laggy or anything, I'm still fairly TAG, but I'm showing aggression in the right places, and I'm floating at the right times.

Selected Hands

Fist pump hands imo:

UTG villain is like 19/15/4, I see him raising any PP's here, possibly SC's and certainly some broadway stuff. I'm still not sure about calling down here. Obv I'm putting him on the lower end of that range:

Managed to get myself in the shit with the turn call here, but dug myself out again with the river bet.

Ok floating OOP isn't ideal, but I knew this villain was gonna bet the flop once I checked, as soon as he gave up on the turn the river bet was inevitable. Not the way I was expecting the hand to play out, but sometimes you just gotta act on the weakness.

So, I'm still not playing the desired 3k hands/day, but after tonight, I'll be off for a couple of days so time to cram in some hands. Got my coaching video review tomorrow night so looking forward to that. I'll give an update on how that goes in my next posting.

I've almost reached another poker milestone, so hopefully in the next few day's I can update you with that, any guesses? GL all!

Friday, 5 September 2008

Played 7 sessions over 3 days. Having 2 x $500 days which is always nice. Seem to be getting to grips with my NSD winnings somewhere closer to the break even line. This is mainly due to constant steals, and squeezing a fair amount from the blinds. Mixed in with some floating and I've had a constant red line in my HEM graphs, just hovering under the $0, well -$300 to be precise.

Had another go at the WCOOP steps again today..... Why the fuck do I bother. For the second time running I get upto step 4, (which gets me a buy in of $700 to step 5) and go out as a fairly convincing 80%+ favourite. Not only that I went straight out with no parachute to a lower level, Damn!

Coaching

Did my video for the coaching session. It wasn't that great tbh, regarding getting into tricky spots. There were some stuff to analyse, I'm sure he'll pick up on my flatting OOP stuff, but w/e I'll see what his review is like and we'll take it from there.

Also did a sweat session with Zach. He played 4 tables of 100nl 6mx and ran like god. Mainly through some good LAG play, and I certainly picked up on a few things I liked in his play. I thought I squeezed a lot, but he does it a bit more than me and with any crap as well :). Hopefully we can do some more because I tend to take more in when I talk things through and see the actions, rather than just reading strategy all the time, I guess it's my age and trying to absorb lots of text tbh.

The only thing I'm a little disappointed with this month is the number of hands I'm getting in. I dunno, I just can't seem to play as long with the 6max. Maybe it just takes it out of me having to really concentrate with all the decisions I have to make. Only played like 8757 so far. I was sort of hoping to put in 3k/day, but I'm well short of that.

So next up should be a review with my coach of the vid I made so we'll see how it goes. GL all.

Tuesday, 2 September 2008

Well after that god awful month of August, I decided, enough was enough.

I need some coaching!

Now, unfortunately, I don't easily absorb information by reading, reading and reading. I need someone to 'explain it and show me' sort of approach. So, I know Chuck was getting some A1 coaching from one of the Stox pro's, so I thought I'll give a shot.

I looked at the coaching thread on 2+2 and have gone for a new coach, who has come highly recommended by mods and customers, and more importantly, is quite cheap. So I'm gonna do him a video of me 4-tabling 6max 100nl and we'll see how it goes.

Bored

Well the new update for Stars brought down all the pokertrackers, so I didn't fancy playing a shit load of 6max without a HUD, so I thought I'd give the multi tabling video a shot again. I'd previously been having trouble compressing it, but my new coach gave me a few tips, and although the rendering of the video takes an eternity (even though I have a fairly new, decent spec laptop) it seems to work ok.

So then I made a 15-20 minute video of me 20 tabling 100nl full ring. It's not really to show you how to play that many tables, it's more to show some of the guys on CC who just play 2-3 tables at a time. Just to see how manic it looks/gets. Funnily enough, I'm really quite used to it now, so it's definately within most peoples capabilities I think. Anyways, I don't think my play was great even if I did run ok. I think most of my winnings for that day though came about 5-10mins before I started the video though, Doh!

So tomorrow I'll be doing my 1hr video for my coaching session. I may also post it on CC, but I'm a bit shy so we'll see. GL all.

Monday, 1 September 2008

Bullshit..... Total fucking bullshit..... That was the month of August.

Even before the last 3 days of poker, August sucked bad, but at least it was gonna be an ok green month. Then 'Boooom' I actually tilted for like 3k hands or so and -$900 to boot, and played some shit poker. I couldn't bring myself away from the game, it was that comical WTF!

I think I was just pissed off with running so up and down, it just got to me. I haven't tilted like that since last March when I lost a horrific amount of buy ins at 50nl 6max.

Then not only that, I had played some WCOOP steps and had managed to get to level 4 ($215ish), next step would get me to a $700 buy in. Pretty card dead and needing to make a move, Donkster raises from ep (this tit has just hit runner, runner, runner, runner, runner for his all in AQ to beat AK!) and I push w/JJ, he calls w/AT to hit...... runner fucking runner again.... jammy &%*&!!!!

OK so I'm thinking fuck it lets play in the Turbo Takedown, thats just like easy money yeah? Fook me in almost 2 hours I had one hand, fucking 88! Went out with 100 left before the bubble.

So bye August and my -$1100 all in EV luck as well FFS!

Thank God for FPP's as I think I managed to make around $850-900 or so.

About Me

I started playing poker in summer of 2006. I made several unsuccessful deposits on Ladbrokes, PartyPoker, Pokerstars and just about every other poker site going. Then I discovered Cardschat and 2+2 poker forums and started to actually learn poker theory.
In Spring 2007, I made a $200 deposit on Pokerstars with my new found knowledge, I thought I had a chance at this game. I played the $10 sng's and quickly increased my balance upto $1500.
After realising my future belonged with cash games, which took quite some time to make the transition, I began playing them seriously at the start of 2008.
Hence this blog, 'Champagne Supernova'. 2008 was always going to be a Supernova year, and it was a great year. Lets hope 2009, will be an amazing one!